The world is remembering the Holocaust, but it is not doing enough to condemn Iran and its anti-Semitism, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday, at a Knesset session marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day that will be observed on Thursday.
Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin also spoke at the session, saying, “The world remembers, but is silent.”
RELATED:European lawmakers remember the six
millionYad Vashem, Google team up to put Shoah data
onlineRivlin lashed out at the world for not taking action against Iran.
“Six years after the world established International Holocaust Remembrance Day and vowed to remember – the serpent of destruction again raises its head,” he said.
“It turns out that in complete contrast to the hopes of the Zionist movement, an old anti-Semitism is emerging again,” he continued.
“Today, we’re not talking anymore about secret protocols, so tomorrow no country can claim that it didn’t know and didn’t hear. The snake has announced its intentions at the UN, and today its venom is aimed at the entire free world. So just remembering the Holocaust is not enough.
Opposition leader Tzipi Livni condemned the statements of both Netanyahu and Rivlin.
“It is forbidden to compare the situation of Israel to that of the Jews of the Holocaust,” she said. “We always have the Holocaust in mind and our leaders must justifiably ask themselves if we recognize a threat in time and how to act.
“But parents who ask themselves what they would do if they lived at that time must not be given the feeling that Israel is in a similar situation. Israel is not defenseless or in exile alone against evil that tried to destroy them because of who they are.”
At the United Nations in New York, representatives will mark the occasion with a ceremony at the General Assembly.
This year the international organization has chosen to highlight the plight of female victims with an exhibit called “Women and the Holocaust: Courage and Compassion.”
On Tuesday, European parliamentarians and Israeli and Jewish officials gathered at the legislative seat of the European Union in Brussels, to mark the occasion.
International Holocaust Remembrance Day is marked around the world on January 27, the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau by the Soviet army in 1945.
Israel’s own Holocaust Remembrance Day is on the 27th of the Hebrew month of Nisan, which generally falls in April. That date was chosen because it is close to the anniversary of 1943’s Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
Meanwhile, the German premiere of the Turkish film Valley of the Wolves, which depicts IDF soldiers indiscriminately killing Palestinians and had been scheduled for Thursday, was postponed.
Organizers said the decision had nothing to do with the memorial day, but was related to a disagreement with the distributor.
On Tuesday, Diaspora Affairs Minister Yuli Edelstein and European Jewish Congress President Moshe Kantor held a press conference in Brussels at which they lashed out against the planned German screening.
